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11/01/2016

Dynamo for Construction

Dynamo is a visual way of doing complex tasks, it has been around for a couple of years now and it is certainly better known for geometry manipulation and form finding processes -

did you know that it can be of great help also in the construction as well?

Dynamo is an open source visual programming platform supported by Autodesk and available as a free Revit plugin. Dynamo is shipped along with Revit since version 2016 R2, but you can always download the latest version from dynamobim.org as well, where you will also find a plenty of tutorials, videos as well as a user forum.

Basically, Dynamo provides a direct access to the Revit programming interface for non-programmers among us. It is based on a library containing pre-scripted elements which can be connected together visually in order to accomplish a certain task.

Collision management is one of the main benefits for the construction industry to move from 2D to 3D and BIM, and Navisworks offers some very powerful tools for tracking and managing these, which is surely nothing new for you. Dynamo can help you to create a very smooth workflow between Navisworks and Revit, as you can see in the following video:

This is a great use case that demonstrates the real power of Dynamo by giving you the full access to the Revit API without the need for programming skills. You can download the datasets used in the video above here.

In the future posts we will discuss collision management and other usecases for the Dynamo in the construction process in more detail.

The step from detailed design to construction in a Building Information Modeling (BIM)-enabled workflow is a challenge for many design offices and construction companies. In many situations, designs need to be changed after contractors have reviewed the models on constructability. In this class, you will discover how you can involve computational design in this process. You will learn how to use the Dynamo extension to automate all kinds of custom tasks in Revit software to make your design constructible. You will get inspired by the wide range of possibilities the Dynamo extension offers to create your own model check and to automate the creation of construction elements.This session features Revit, Dynamo Studio and Navisworks Manage

By the way, this year there will be 50(!) Dynamo sessions at the AU – which shows that this topic is getting more and more important for all areas.